This invention relates to improvements in bat board construction on harvesters reels of the type used for the harvesting of soybeans.
It is a well known and common practice in the farming industry to use harvester reel bats for the harvesting of soybeans and other crops as exemplified in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,158,976, 3,796,030, 3,869,847 and others referred to therein. Conventionally, such bats include an elongated support shaft extending the length of the reel and a plurality of generally rectangular bat boards spaced longitudinally thereof and secured thereto in immediate depending relationship. The shafts are supported at respective ends by reel components on the harvester which are rotated by appropriate well known mechanism not material to this invention. The number of bat assemblies including the number of journals, bearings and the like on each shaft carried by the reel may vary with the style and size of the reel. Such bats are used both with and without depending tines but usually include such tines which, as the reel rotates forwardly at the top and rearwardly at the bottom, serve to rake or comb the plants rearwardly into the cutting and conveying mechanism of the harvester.
Harvesting machines of the type here involved may be equipped, as is well known, either with a floating sickle bar which cuts the soybean plant approximately one and one half to two inches from the ground or with a non-floating sickle bar that cuts the plant approximately two and one half to four inches from the ground. The use of the floating sickle bar is the more prevalent of the two and requires a deeper penetration of the bat into the standing plants than with the non-floating bar for efficient harvesting. Thus, the depth of penetration of the bat as commonly practiced is an important factor in the harvesting process of soybeans for the following reasons.
The soybean is a leguminous plant attaining heights in the range of twenty four to forty eight inches with a general average of thirty four inches more or less. The plant has hairy stems branching in all directions with thick trifoliate hairy leaves and a fruit which is a broad two to five seeded pod covered with stiff reddish hairs. By the time the soybeans are ready for harvest, the leaves are gone leaving the narrow hairy stems and the hairy pods and because of these characteristics, the plants have an inherent tendency to cling together when jostled or moved into contact with each other. Consequently, when harvester reel bats of conventional construction and as presently used disturb the plants as the bat makes a penetration thereof, the stems and pods tend to swing back together and form a clinging mass above the bat. In this condition when the sickle bar severs the stems near the ground, at least some of the plants become wrapped around the moving bats and reel instead of being drawn into the machine. When this occurs, and as the harvester proceeds, part of the wrapped plants will remain on the bat and reel and accumulate, part may fall to the ground to be recut by the sickle bar and part may remain on the ground without reaching the machine. Elevation of the sickle bar to possibly avoid the wrapping results in the beans accumulating on the platform of the machine and eventually plugging the machine.
The reason for such accumulations on the bat and reel is because the conventional bat board is relatively narrow on the order of one to one and a quarter inches and, as noted above, is disposed in adjacent depending relationship to a support shaft of corresponding diameter so that the shaft and bat present a relative small and narrow elongated component as it moves into the plants resulting in the wrapping described. The amount of such accumulations of plants on the bat and reel will vary as some accumulations fall off as previously mentioned and as more is added, they will eventually reach a point where they must be removed for efficient harvesting. This is best accomplished by hand and is, of course, an interruption in harvesting and time consuming as well as wasteful of the crop which falls to the ground.
With the above observations in mind, it is one of the important objects of this invention to provide an improved bat construction for a harvester reel used in harvesting soybeans that will, as it penetrates the plant to draw the cut stems into the operating mechanism of the harvester, serve to maintain separation of the plants above the bat to prevent their clinging together and from becoming wrapped about the bat board and reel.
More particularly, it is an object herein to provide a harvester reel bat as characterized which includes a plant spacer member preferably in the form of a bat shield of tear drop configuration having its widest dimension at the top and its narrowest dimension at the bottom.
Another object is to provide a tear drop shaped bat shield of the above class on which the width of the top is several times greater than the width of the bottom and of the diameter of any bat support shaft to which it may be attached whereby the wide top serves to maintain separation of the plants as the bottom of the shield penetrates the plants and thus prevents the plants from becoming wrapped about the shield or reel.
A further object is to provide a bat shield as described that is of unitary construction or otherwise designed to be planar in extending the length of the harvester reel and offers no restricted intermediate areas or surfaces susceptible to facilitating the wrapping of the plant thereabout.
Still a further object of this invention is to provide an improved bat board construction of the above class which provides for more efficient harvesting of soybeans by eliminating crop accumulations, by more efficiently raking and combing the plants at the bottom into the machine instead of pulling them from their upper portion when wrapping occurs and by increasing the total yield obtainable by the harvester due to a lesser amount of the cut crop escaping entry into the machine.
Another object is to provide an improved method of harvesting soybeans.
The foregoing objects and such further objects as may appear herein, or be hereinafter pointed out, together with the advantages of this invention will be more fully discussed and developed in the more detailed description of the accompanying drawings.